By Caroline Valetkevitch and Shashwat Chauhan
Oct 20 (Reuters) - US stock indexes ended mostly higher as oil prices and Treasury yields eased on Tuesday, while French stocks fell as worries about unrest in the country remained.
Helping the blue-chip Dow, 3M shares shot up 5.8% after it said it was expanding its data-center partnership with Amazon. Shares of the industrial conglomerate were also boosted by the company raising its full-year profit forecast.
After the closing bell, shares of SpaceX rose
after the company said its third-quarter revenue more than doubled, beating estimates as AI and Starlink grew. The stock fell 0.1% in the regular session. At the same time, Netflix fell in after-hours trading as it gave a disappointing quarterly forecast. The stock was down 1.7% in the regular session.
Quarterly results from AI heavyweight Meta are scheduled for Wednesday.
Investors are looking to corporate earnings for evidence that consumers and the broader economy remain resilient, but also that massive AI spending is paying off.
"Investors really are waiting for the growth companies to report. Analysts have raised their estimates ... It's going to be by how much do they jump over that elevator bar," said Bruce Zaro, managing director at Granite Wealth Management in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Reflecting some of this nervousness was a 32% drop in South Korean AI infrastructure company Elice Group, when the stock fell below its initial public offering price in its market debut.
Investors are also still assessing the risk that higher interest rates pose to AI stocks.
Longer-dated US Treasury yields dropped, with the yield on the benchmark US 10-year Treasury note down 1.5 basis points at 5.121% after falling as low as 5.073% on the day. Yields have risen recently amid worries about inflation.
Expectations for a rate hike of at least 25 basis points from the Federal Reserve at its policy meeting next week stand at 17.2%, according to CME FedWatch, down from 22.1% a week ago and 57.6% a month earlier.
"This is a market relieved that rates have come down, relieved that there's less volatility in oil prices, even though they remain elevated," said Jake Dollarhide, CEO of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
"Earnings season can distract this market. Earnings season can give this market reason to go higher," he said.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 529.85 points, or 1.02%, to 52,495.88, the S&P 500 rose 21.84 points, or 0.28%, to 7,712.57 and the Nasdaq Composite fell 6.07 points, or 0.02%, to 26,424.82. MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe rose 0.42 points, or 0.04%, to 1,130.40.
FRENCH STOCKS FALL, OIL EASES
France's cities were calm overnight under curfews imposed after last weekend's unrest, while protest groups announced a new round of demonstrations next Saturday.
French stocks fell 0.38%, while the pan-European STOXX 600 index was down 0.14%. European semiconductor companies including ASML and ASMI also were lower.
France's government bond yields climbed further, with investors remaining cautious ahead of the plans for further protests. The unrest in France has underscored the difficulties the French government faces in reducing its large deficit.
France's 10-year OAT yield earlier was up 3 basis points at 4.96%; it reached 4.9937%, its highest since July 2002, in early October. The yield gap between OATs and Bunds widened by 5.5 bps to 152.50 bps.
The euro was up 0.22% at $1.1235, though traders remained cautious because of the unrest in France.
Meanwhile, the US dollar weakened. The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies including the yen and the euro, fell 0.25% to 101.71.
Investors assessed the durability of strong capital inflows into US AI companies. Those inflows have supported the dollar. Higher interest rates, driven partly by growth and inflation expectations tied to the sector, have helped.
Oil prices slipped after touching a five-month high. Investors assessed a meeting between the Iranian president and Pakistan's army chief, a key US-Iran mediator, against continued Houthi attacks on Saudi infrastructure that could disrupt supply.
Brent crude futures fell 76 cents, or 0.69%, to settle at $108.79. Earlier in the session, the front-month contract reached $111.99, a five-month high. The November contract for US West Texas Intermediate crude, which expired on Tuesday, settled down $1.87, or 1.8%, at $101.79.
(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch in New York and Shashwat Chauhan in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Rocky Swift in Tokyo and Ankur Banerjee in Singapore; Editing by Shri Navaratnam, Jacqueline Wong, Amanda Cooper, Xevi Fontdegloria, Kevin Liffey, Rod Nickel)
